Business enterprises may utilize filtering processes to ensure that data that is accessible on an internal network is stored and maintained in a secure manner. In one example, a business enterprise may store personal and/or commercial information associated with one or more clients. Accordingly, the business enterprise may execute one or more processes to ensure that this confidential information may not be communicated, inadvertently or otherwise, outside of one or more secure, internal networks. Specifically, the business enterprise may utilize network filtering software to prevent internal users, or employees, from gaining access to external network locations that may not be sufficiently secure.
In one specific example, a business enterprise may utilize a third-party website filtering device to monitor requests. As such, a monitored request may be an attempt to access to one or more external websites (external to the business enterprise, e.g., on the World Wide Web), and made by users of a network internal to the business enterprise. In turn, the third-party website filtering device may identify, and prevent access to, one or more websites to which access may not be granted, based upon one or more features of said websites. These features may include, among others, means for communicating information out from a secure network that is internal to a business enterprise. For example, a third-party website filtering device may identify, and block access to, a website facilitating access to email accounts that are not associated with the business enterprise in question.
A third-party website filtering device vendor may be requested to maintain and update a database of external network locations (websites, and the like) to which access may not be granted to users of one or more internal networks of a business enterprise. However, given the volume, and ever-changing nature of websites accessible via the Internet, there may exist various external network locations to which users may gain access, in spite of noncompliance of these network locations with one or more accessibility rules mandated by the business enterprise. These insecure, but accessible, external network locations may represent a significant potential security risk to a business enterprise, and as such, a need exists for an improved network monitoring device.